Many of the Orioles’ nests are also deserving notice.  The black and yellow Oriole, inhabiting South America, has a pendent nest, shaped like an alembic; it is affixed to the extreme branches of trees; sometimes, it is said, so many as four hundred nests are found hanging on the same tree.

The Philippine and Pensile Grosbeak make also very curious nests.

In concluding this account of the nests of birds, I may notice here the nest of the Hirundo esculenta, or Esculent Swallow, an inhabitant of China and the Islands of the Indian Ocean.  The nest consists of a gelatinous substance, in shape resembling an apple cut down the middle.  The nests are found in great numbers together, and are by the luxurious Asiatics made into broths, and otherwise cooked, and are esteemed one of the greatest dainties of the table; they are also occasionally used for glue.—­Jennings’s Ornithologia.

    [1] We are pleased therefore to commence our Supplementary Sheet
        with such a volume as the present, which we have reserved for
        this purpose.  The feelings which it must engender in the reader
        will be doubly grateful in these troublous times of strong
        political excitement:  they enjoin “peace on earth, and goodwill
        towards men.” the Divine antidote to the storms of conflicting
        interests and passions, and the balm which heals the thorny
        wounds of the world, that cross every path and tear the finest
        sympathies of our nature.  It adds, moreover, a pleasant variety
        to the contents of our sheet, and alternates with the
        vicissitudes of enterprise, in the progress of infant liberty
        in the New World, as in the Memoirs of the patriot Miller;—­the
        daring and recklessness of crime, as in the vivid sketch of
        First and Last;—­the picturesque country and ceremonies of
        Arabia and its religious people, as drawn by Burckhardt;—­and
        the architectural embellishment of the Metropolis, as shown in
        Britton’s Picture of London.

    [2] In the MIRROR, dated March 1, 1828, we noticed “Gilbert White’s
        Natural History of Selborne, is one of the most delightful
        household books in our language, and we are surprised at the
        rarity of such works.”  The publication of the Journal of a
        Naturalist, early in March, 1829, is “a coincidence.”

    [3] Philosophers and wits have written on this subject.  Sir Thomas
        Brown, who wrote a book of Vulgar Errors, remarks with great
        seriousness that the man “who could eradicate this error from the
        minds of the people, might prevent the fearful passions of the
        heart, and many cold sweats taking place in grandmothers and
        nurses”—­Swift lets fly the shafts of satire in these lines.—­